Mark Twain, a Biography. Complete eBook

Redpath read his despatch to a lecture audience, with
effect. Howells made immediate preparation for
receiving two way-worn, hungry men. He telegraphed
to Young’s Hotel: “You and Twichell
come right up to 37 Concord Avenue, Cambridge, near
observatory. Party waiting for you.”

They got to Howells’s about nine o’clock,
and the refreshments were waiting. Miss Longfellow
was there, Rose Hawthorne, John Fiske, Larkin G. Mead,
the sculptor, and others of their kind. Howells
tells in his book how Clemens, with Twichell, “suddenly
stormed in,” and immediately began to eat and
drink:

I can see him now as he stood up in
the midst of our friends, with his head thrown
back, and in his hand a dish of those escalloped oysters
without which no party in Cambridge was really a party,
exulting in the tale of his adventure, which had
abounded in the most original characters and amusing
incidents at every mile of their progress.

Clemens gave a dinner, next night, to Howells, Aldrich,
Osgood, and the rest. The papers were full of
jokes concerning the Boston expedition; some even
had illustrations, and it was all amusing enough at
the time.

Next morning, sitting in the writing-room of Young’s
Hotel, he wrote a curious letter to Mrs. Clemens,
though intended as much for Howells and Aldrich as
for her. It was dated sixty-one years ahead, and
was a sort of Looking Backwards, though that notable
book had not yet been written. It presupposed
a monarchy in which the name of Boston has been changed
to “Limerick,” and Hartford to “Dublin.”
In it, Twichell has become the “Archbishop of
Dublin,” Howells “Duke of Cambridge,”
Aldrich “Marquis of Ponkapog,” Clemens
the “Earl of Hartford.” It was too
whimsical and delightful a fancy to be forgotten.—­[This
remarkable and amusing document will be found under
Appendix M, at the end of last volume.]

A long time afterward, thirty-four year, he came across
this letter. He said:

“It seems curious now that I should have been
dreaming dreams of a future monarchy and never suspect
that the monarchy was already present and the Republic
a thing of the past.”

What he meant, was the political succession that had
fostered those commercial trusts which, in turn, had
established party dominion.

To Howells, on his return, Clemens wrote his acknowledgments,
and added:

Mrs. Clemens gets upon the verge of
swearing, and goes tearing around in an unseemly
fury when I enlarge upon the delightful time we
had in Boston, and she not there to have her share.
I have tried hard to reproduce Mrs. Howells to
her, and have probably not made a shining success
of it.

XCVIII

“OldtimesontheMississippi”

Howells had been urging Clemens to do something more
for the Atlantic, specifically something for the January
number. Clemens cudgeled his brains, but finally
declared he must give it up: